Hello, My family of 5 (DH, me, 3 teens) is going to Universal for three nights the week of Thanksgiving. We have 2-day, PTP passes and are staying at RPR so will also have express passes.
Some logistical questions:
We will arrive at RPR LATE on the Tuesday night that week. We have tickets from Undercover Tourist. We plan to use our tickets/express passes on Wednesday morning and we hope to get there at the earlier time for resort guests. Is it possible to link our Undercover Tourist tickets to our phones? Would that expedite the process? If I remember the one other time we went to Universal (2018), I seem to recall having to get physical tickets, signing them, etc. It was kind of an ordeal. Any thoughts on this?
Bags. We like to each carry a light bag with hydration, primarily. But Universal has so many lockers, and I think they’ve changed since we last visited. Do we need physical coins/cash for these lockers? Will they fit small cinch bags with water bottles? Will they fit the interactive wands (we may bring them one day - from our previous trip)? Should we try to contain our stuff to one bag to save ourselves some headaches? (I’m anxious about hydration, but we were last there in a summer month, and that was rough. Maybe in November, hydration won’t be as critical…?) I was thinking of just leaving the wands in the resort til we needed them (and then sending one of us to get them), but I’m also slightly worried about the park reaching capacity and not being allowed back in.
Thanks for any thoughts you have on the above or anything else.
I’ve added tickets from UT to the Universal app before with no issue!
As far as hydration, my family of 5 was just there last month. We each had our own fannypack (no need to use lockers on most rides — biggest bonus to me was no locker use at Hagrid’s), and we’d put a few small snacks in there along with collapsible water bottles. These were AMAZING. Filled up for free at the coke freestyle machines, folded up and put into fannypack when not using or going on a ride. We all stayed nice and hydrated!
For wands - they fit in lockers, but then you’d have to use a locker We had our kids leave their wands in the hotel on the mornings when we were rope-dropping Hagrid’s and didn’t want to have to deal with lockers and what not, and we’d get them after our afternoon break when we cared less about that.
You do not need cash for the lockers, they all take cards if you need to pay for a larger one or if you go over your time limit. Your drawstring bags should fit in the small free lockers. I would each carry the small bag if that’s what you are all used to doing. Your family can disburse to different locker banks to save time, there are many of them. Use any bar code/QR to scan and a locker will pop open.
I also recommend using the Coke Freestyle machines to get your free water. There are about 10 in each park, so they are always close by. You may not need to keep a water bottle with you constantly since it shouldn’t be too hot out. Here is a collapsible cup option for you as well:
Those collapsible cups are too small to be useful, we found. We did find some collapsible water bottles we liked better, and bonus was we could keep them filled and once empty, roll them up and stash them into a pocket. Similar to these…
E-Senior Collapsible Water Bottle BPA Free - Foldable Water Bottle for Travel Sports Bottles with Triple Leak Proof Lightweight 20oz (Blue) https://a.co/d/7MPcxZ6
We had our kids leave their wands in the hotel on the mornings when we were rope-dropping Hagrid’s and didn’t want to have to deal with lockers and what not, and we’d get them after our afternoon break when we cared less about that.